Month: September 2004

I Smell Junk Science . . .

. . . in this article about men suffering from pre-menstrual syndrome.

Setting aside the obvious point that men don’t menstruate, it is hypothetically possible that men have a monthly biological rythm that leads them to experience PMS-like symptoms on a regular basis, however that is not what the study in question shows.

All it shows is that on a survey of 50 (!) men, the men admitted to

feeling antisocial and suffering poor concentration; depression; lack of arousal; hot flushes and pain – including stomach cramps, back pain and headaches.

Okay, fine. But so what? Lots of people have periodic symptoms like that without it amounting to a syndrome. What you’d need to have in order to argue that there is a male equivalent to PMS is evidence that the symptoms recur on a somewhat regular schedule, especially a monthly one. Yet that is what the researchers seem to admit they don’t have. According to the article:

[Dr. Aimee Aubeeluck] and colleague Joanne Worsey will now study couples over several months to discover if symptoms are cyclical for both men and women.

Given the wild inaccuracy of the press (more on that later), I can’t be sure if the researchers themselves tried to advance the “male PMS” angle or if that was a figment of the newspaper’s imagination, but if so it would be irresponsible to advance such a claim based on the scanty data the article represents the researchers as having (anybody know where the original study can be read online?).

What Ratzinger Said

[NOTE TO FELLOW BLOGGERS: This topic is important enough that I’d encourage you to link to this post so more people can get the straight story on it. Thanks!–Jimmy]

“A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.”

So wrote Cardinal Ratzinger in a confidential memorandum titled Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles that became public earlier this year.

Many Catholics were at a loss to understand the Cardinal’s statement. “Has Ratzinger lost his mind?” some wondered. “Isn’t he departing from sound Catholic theology?”

Others, including well-known dissidents, pounced on the statement as vindication for their cause and wrote newspaper columns trumpeting it as proof that in the Vatican’s view it is okay to vote for pro-abortion politicians as long as you don’t share their pro-abortion view. In other words, a voter can be “personally opposed but . . .”

Both responses fail to do justice to the Cardinal’s remark. Contrary to the first response, he is not departing from the established principles of Catholic moral theology. In fact, he is emphasizing them. Contrary to the second response, he is not offering an easy pretext for voting for pro-abort politicians.

Continue reading “What Ratzinger Said”

I . . . Have Returned

Blogging has been light the last few days while I’ve been dealing with the killer bee invasion (at least, they must be presumed to have been killer bees). They now appear to be vanquished, and I am on the verge of getting back into my house full time.

That means a return to regular blogging as well.

Prayers are also welcome, as I wouldn’t want a straggler bee to put me into anaphylaxis due to a previously-undiscovered bee allergy.

Shrinking Apologist Update

When I was bugging out of my house the other day (pun intended), I only had moments to pack, and one of the few things I grabbed as three shirts from my closet. These were virtually the only clothes, other than the ones I was wearing, that I ended up leaving the house with.

Unfortunately, these were three old-and-not-very-nice shirts, but they were among the few clean ones I had left (doing laundry being a major goal of my labor day weekend). Grabbing these was dumb. What I should have done was grab an armload of dirty laundry and then found a place to wash it once I was settled elsewhere, but there you have it.

I thus emerged from my apartment with not enough shirts to make it through the week, no extra socks or underwear, and no extra pants–a combination of circumstances that would make it remarkably difficult to do laundry in any laundromat.

I decided that a trip to Wal-Mart was in order.

I might not end up looking stylish, but I’d be able to get through the week and do laundry in public until I can get back into my apartment.

I bought a cheap polo shirt, a couple of cheap grey T-shirt/undershirts, and an inexpensive pair of jeans.

Deciding on the sizes to buy was a little dicey, as all of my old clothes sizes are out of date, but my guesses were pretty accurate.

I know that different manufacturers use different sizing schemes, but I’m pleased to report that polo-maker Puritan and T-shirt maker Fruit of the Loom both now consider me to be just a “large” (as opposed to the XXL they used to consider me).

My pants-guessing didn’t go quite as well. I assumed that I’d lost four inches off my waist, but it appears that I’ve lost six, as I still need to keep my belt snug. Also, although I no longer need Wrangler “relaxed fit” jeans, neither–it turns out–do I need “regular fit” jeans. They’re too bulky on me. I really need “slim . . .”–er–“tight . . . “–er–well, let’s just say that I need whatever is below “regular fit.”

Incidentally, interesting Wal-Mart they have here in El Cajon. It’s not laid out like any Wal-Mart I’ve ever been to. Among other things, it’s two-story, and next to the human escalators they have special escalators to take your shopping cart up and down as well.

Young + Overweight = Bad. Old + Overweight = Good?

Here’s an interesting article from JunkScience that calls into question the obesity-related death statistics that are conventionally cited.

Make no mistake, overweight and obesity are problems, but they are problems that need to be dealt with by accurate science, and there has been all too little of that in connection with diets and dieting.

The article points out that the obesity-related death statistics are unbalanced because they exclude the effect overweight has on elderly Americans. This may be a bad thing because, as the article notes, studies find that among the elderly obesity either has no correlation with mortality or it has a strong negative correlation.

In other words: Having some extra pounds available as nutritional reserves when you are old and in ill-health may be a good thing.

Having excess weight when younger is definitely bad and is correlated to all kinds of health problems, some of which can be life-threatening. But it may be that our bodies know what they’re doing when they allow extra pounds to accumulate with advancing age. We may be stocking up supplies for when the going gets tough in old age the way bears put on fat for the winter.

Much more research obviously needs to be done here, but it’s an interesting hypothesis.

In the future we might have more ideal-weight tables that include age as an axis, only this time they’ll be backed up by science instead of guesswork.

GET THE STORY.

Attack of the Killer Bees!!!

BEESIDEThis is not the Labor Day weekend I was expecting!

Around the office on Friday, people were wishing each other a good weekend and asking if they had any special plans for the holiday.

My major plan was to do laundry. Probably watch some DVDs. Maybe do some writing and studying Indonesian.

Saturday I answered my door, and as I did so, I noticed a bee buzzing under the Venetian blind, trying to get out of the glass.

“How did that get in here?” I wondered.

I killed it.

A few minutes later I was heading out the door to get what I needed for a home improvement project, when I saw another bee on the Venetian blind on my front door.

I killed it, too.

But wait: Two bees in the same exact place indoors within minutes of each others?

There could be a group.

My mind flashed back to a time when I was out for a lunchtime constitutional and ran across a whole swarm of bees buzzing around a service access duct poking up through the blacktop of a parking lot. (I marched quickly past it and then called the owners to let them know they had a bee hazard in their parking lot.)

So I went out my front door and stood in front of the house, just observing.

A bee went by.

Then my eyes settled on a ventilation duct at the peak of my roof.

It was swarming with bees. I estimate between one and two dozen were visible.

“They must have a colony in my attic,” I realized. So I got ahold of my landlady. I had trouble at first getting her to understand the exact nature of the problem, but I brought her over to see it for herself. When she did, she instantly realized the danger the bees posed.

A colony of potentially hundreds of bees infesting a house, including its living quarters . . . that has possible anaphylactic shock and lawsuit written all over it.

From her perspective.

From my perspective it has possible anaphylactic shock and death written all over it. I don’t have a bee allergy to my knowledge, but then many people who have the allergy don’t know it, and it can develop suddenly, without warning. Also, if a swarm goes after you, you can get stung enough times to have a life-threatening reaction just from the toxicity of the venom, even if you aren’t allergic.

Further, since Africanized “killer” bees have invaded Southern California (killer bees being “killer” only in their aggressiveness, not their toxicity), every untested swarm has to be assumed to be Africanized and thus more likely to attack. Thus I have to assume that I have killer bees living in my attic.

I’m not staying in my house again until those bees are gone!

Unfortunately, it being a holiday weekend, they couldn’t reach the exterminators and probably can’t get anyone to start the (long, complicated) process of bee de-infestation till Tuesday. I estimate that I’m likely not to be able to live in my house for a week or more.

Even when I finally get back in, I won’t be comfortable for a while.

So the bees have forced me to do what the fires last November didn’t: evacuate. At one point when the fires were raging and the world outside looked totally apocalyptic, I had the truck packed and was within five minutes of evacuating, but it didn’t end up being necessary. With possible killer bees infesting my house, though, it is.

I did go back in for a few minutes to get a few essentials, but as I did so I noticed a third bee on my front door’s Venetian blind. It waggled its antennae at me menacingly, so I grabbed far fewer essentials than I originally intended and hustled out of the house as quickly as I could.

Afterward I found myself thinking: “I hope no bees are stowing away in my stuff, ready to crawl out and sting me like what happened to Agent Scully in The X-Files movie.”

Me vs. Ani-Me

A while back I used an online application to do an anime-style version of myself (Ani-Me). At the time, I didn’t have a recent picture of myself, so folks couldn’t see what I look like these days. Now that’s been rectified, so I thought y’all might like a comparison. Here ’tis:

anime_me1me1c

It’s not identical (given the limitations of the progam–which didn’t even have a cowboy hat option–the style of anime, and the fact I’m not smiling in the photo), but at least folks can see I wasn’t trying to lie with the picture.